When great bands go bad

...amd made a Fort Knox worth of money. The music business has changed so much. Nonetheless with itunes money, all of these old guys should be printing money.Though can anyone in their right monds explain why Scorcese did a Stones concert film about 35 years too late? Why?

Vaguely remember seeing some VH1 "Behind the Music" thing about REM where the drummer explained he like to spend his weekends "antiquing". When REM was big, it was with college girls who subjected boyfriends to REM. And once those girls became young women, unintelligible whiny lyrics weren't nearly as cool. And it's a little much for straight guys who buy music. It's not necessarily homophobia, because Rob Halford and Judas Priest continue to tour and make serious coin. Add a your flaky lead singer changing his t shirt every 10 minutes, enough.What was left to do after that crappy rap song? If on the other hand your gay lead singer rides onto the stage in a leather jacket and on a Harley slicing through "Hellbent for Leather", gay or not, cool.

Rock and roll is a young man's game. That pretty much sums up the issue.

I agree with Tony. Genesis was able to consistently reinvent themselves. Is that due in part to Phil Collins involvement? Does that man ever age?

Stipe, Buck and Mills (and Berry, earlier) stand on the stages they've worked, automatically for the people, from a rapport with Colbert on Comedy Central in '08 -

comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=164877
comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=164876

to a Late Night with Letterman on NBC in '83, their national TV debut:

youtube.com/watch?v=KA57Pafq_NU
youtube.com/watch?v=Ykp0Vq77IBw

"After considering names like 'Twisted Kites', 'Cans of Piss', and 'Negro Wives', the band settled on 'R.E.M.', which Stipe selected at random from a dictionary." - Wikipedia

Add to your roster of fade and resurgence (or, pace Lou Reed, Magic and Loss) Neil Young's sleepy interregnum following 1979's Rust Never Sleeps, until Freedom in 1989 and Ragged Glory, with Crazy Horse, in 1991, kicked him back to full throttle. Has The Who ever recovered from the death of Keith Moon after the release of Who Are You in 1978? Nick Lowe's first two killer solo efforts, Pure Pop For Now People (UK: Jesus of Cool, just reissued deluxe) from 1978 and Labour of Lust from 1979 - followed by a "workmanlike" 1980s, then Party of One in 1990, The Impossible Bird in 1994, and Dig My Mood from 1998, all Lowe highs. Steely Dan's three best were their first three, 1972-74, and after the Cuervo Gold of "Hey Nineteen": the sound of crickets, till 2000's Two Against Nature. Lou Reed: six years after the one-two punch of The Blue Mask and Legendary Hearts, 1982-83, comes New York in 1989 and he's back out on the dirty boulevard, with Magic and Loss a fitting follow-up.

But all that's as maybe, as they say in Pythonspeak, before the international treasure that is Reihan Salam. I've watched him grow from Bodhi sapling as Robin to Andrew's Bruce Wayne, to Enlightenment as AmScene frat-blogger, with an avuncular twinkle. Anyone eclectic enough to appreciate equally Sullivan, Larison and Cracked magazine, geek-chic enough to post vids of his Hillary-as-monster and iPod-lipsync turns, and alchemical enough in optimism to turn the base metal of his recent burglary (to him, not by him - Ed.) into the light-making gold of that mocking song-speak Rod linked, is a multiple-threat artist well on his way to, first, white horses, and ladies by the score, (blogroupies), then eventual inclusion in Rhino's Golden Throats series, Warbling Bloggers editions. Get to know him.

Because my two little boys heard this song -- to be precise, the last line of it

Well, at least you didn't make the tragic error I did of letting your sons watch Beware the Believers and have to listen to them tell you over and over, "Your concerns are noted - and stupid! We are scientists, after all, much, much smarter than you!"

But dang, I watched it over and over because I love the way Darwin dances! Richard Dawkins and his band will never go bad.

Hmmm, I'm with you on "Zooropa" but "Pop" wasn't that bad.

An all-too-often unconsidered reason why great popular musicians who write their own music tend to become less-than-great later on in their careers is that most of these folks are not formally trained -- they have the limited musical vocabularies available to amateurs, which, on the one hand, provides them with a musical "innocence" that allows them to connect with a broad range of listeners intuitively, in a way that a formally-trained musician never could, but which also, on the other hand, puts limits on their musical development over time.

R.E.M. is a case in point. Nearly all their best music is built on classic folk song structures that have been the basis of a kind of popular music with a lineage in America going back to the Scots-Irish settlers and even further back than that into the Celtic mists of time in the British Isles themselves. This musical vocabulary has the great advantage both of sounding really, really good and being relatively easy to play, as will be evident to readers of a certain age based on their memories of that guy down the hall in their college dorm who played "Fall On Me" all day on his 12-string guitar.

R.E.M.'s genius -- when they still had it -- was in finding inventive variations of arrangement for songs written in the same classic jingle-jangle Scots-Irish folk song structures that were their stock in trade from *Murmur* till they started to "suck." The albums from the middle of their great period from 1980 to 1992 were a harder-rocking area-ready version of the same jingle-jangle from the first three paradigm-setting lp's. The albums from their last great phase -- "Green," "Out of Time," "Automatic" -- were largely the result of Buck and the others writing the same sorts of songs they always had, but on different instruments -- mandolin, instead of electric guitar.

Where R.E.M. went wrong was in listening to much to listeners like Bugg who said they couldn't really "rock" or to other kinds of listeners who said they couldn't really play. By a certain point in their career, they had learned enough musically to play in all sorts of styles other than the classic jingle jangle -- grungy rock a la "Monster" and "New Adventures," wanky art-rock a la much of "Up," "Reveal," and "Around the Sun." The problem for them, and for most of their listeners, is they just can't write good songs in either of those modes.

Not every band can be the Beatles, constantly outdoing themselves. Even the Beatles themselves couldn't do so for all that long.

Finally, my verdict on "Accelerate" is that it isn't much better than what R.E.M. has done since '94 and in some ways its worse. It's much more consistent than the last three records, but also much less ambitious. The band take the easy way out at every turn, aping their earlier sound instead of extending it or refreshing it, and relying on the perfidy of George W. Bush for lyric inspiration on almost every cut.

It's discussions like this that bring home to me just how far removed I am from much of the pop culture of the past, oh, two generations. I tend to have my parents' taste in music, and have never listened to much popular music later than, say, Benny Goodman.

Being on the sidelines of a discussion like this is like being with a group of people you know who suddenly start speaking to each other in a foreign language -- a language that you feel you should probably have learned at some point, but have never cared enough to make the effort. A colleague of mine who has never owned a TV says that she feels the same way when the rest of us start talking about TV shows.

Ah, well. La Boheme was lovely yesterday. ;-)

Think your music analysis is a bit glib: after all, when discussing the Rolling Stones, you completely forgot their "Some Girls," which was a huge hit, one of their biggest ever, and had some great songs on it ("Miss You," "Shattered," "Beast of Burden," "Faraway Eyes").

As Duncan commented, very few bands or talents are capable of reinventing themselves continually, as rock by its nature seems to demand. The Beatles were one, but we usually forget that they broke up after less than a decade: if they had tried to keep it going for forty years, even they might have turned a little stale. I was once a big Dylan fan, but became convinced that his internal desire to keep changing led to him trashing his own legacy -- a strange fate, but not an appetizing one.

Talking Heads, not "The Talking Heads"

Duncan MacIntyre at 9 AM is a brilliant comment, really interesting.

I missed Mr. Treed's salutory admonition re not going there with Bob Dylan.

What's so odd about these older bands going into decline is that almost all of the great composers of the past improved as they got older. The exceptions are noted because they are unexpected and intriguing. (Classic example is the quip about Mendelssohn evolving from a genius as a teenager to a "mere" talent.)

My thought is that the decline in the quality of these artists - and you can put together a whole list of them from Pink Floyd to Liz Phair-- shows that the songwriters weren't really ultratalented musicians. They were young and exciting and hit on something for a while. And then lost it. Doesn't mean we can't appreciate their excellent work. But it should make us wonder about any claims to their greatness. I agree that Duncan is on to something.

I opined in an Amazon.com review of London Calling by The Clash that nowhere was the offputting pigeonhole of the "punk" label more absurdly restrictive than there, in its rollicking, round-robin blend of rockabilly, roots-rock, reggae, ska, R-and-B, and jazz, for starters - and much could be said of the 1977-79 sunburst as a whole, much of which I did not get around to engaging until the mid-1990s: the warm, exquisite bilingual Franco-American folk of early Kate and Anna McGarrigle; the saucy pub-rock-meets-music-hall melange of Ian Dury and the Blockheads, England's musical answer to Noel Coward and Benny Hill; Television's dueling-guitar adenoidal angst made transcendent in Marquee Moon; Elvis Costello's first three albums, and Joe Jackson's debut; Nick Lowe's first two, a neoclassicist popster biting his sharp tongue in cheek; the herky-jerky pinball angularity and drumtight rhythms of early XTC; Neil Young's Rust Never Sleeps, and the Who biopic The Kids Are Alright; Talking Heads '77 and its sequel, More Songs About Buildings and Food; the neo-Beatlesque of early Squeeze...

Happily, YouTube affords countless 101s for those for whom the bliss that it was in that dawn to be alive, and in which to be young was very Heaven, can be streamed thirty years on, and none the worse for having been aged in the wood.

I hate to say this because I just completely adored REM once. They were one sun in a twin sun system, the other sun being U2 for a decade or more from the 80's when I was a teenager until, like you said Rod, "Monster"

At the time I thought Monster was one bad album. But then came one disappointing album after the other. The last one I bought was Up. When that one faded into the woodwork after a couple of listens, I knew that the jig was up and I wouldnt be buying any more.

I realized with some sadness years later that REM had a album and single out only because I saw an ad on TV. I didnt buy that one either. It sounded like the same old rut.

And that is what its been. REM has been in something like a decades worth of rut. I never thought they would be one of those bands who didnt know when to quit but they obviously don't seem to even see that they need to and should have quit a long time ago.

Obviously, the narrative push behind this new album is a re-born REM, back in full form and rarin to go. I listened to an interview with them on NPR, and not only did the music not impress, but for the first time, the members of the band rubbed me every kind of wrong. I finally had to conclude that my hunch of all these years was in fact true.

REM suck and will continue to suck as long as they are 1) intent on preaching a holier than thou message 2) Micheal Stipe continues to navel gaze incomprehensibly and 3)trying to jam the music in to fit the crotchety humorless ol liberal mini-diatribes that every REM song has become.

Writing this hurts my loyal heart more than I can say. Did I say that I used to adore them? I never would have predicted that I would one day slam them on the net, but that day has come. Maybe if there is enough of us all saying the obvious, then they will not be able to live in denial anymore and will put the dying beast out of its misery at last. Its sad to see a band that once sparkled, that once was so light on its feet, so witty and literate and wonderfully geeky, come to this.

And while we are at it, I would say the same for U2. They should have quit while they were ahead. All That You Can't Leave Behind was as great a final album as any band could have ever wished for. It has the marks of a swan song all over it. I truly feel that that should have been their last, their final high note. I bought the one after that, but unless this next one is a barn-burner, I won't be buying it.

Could U2 pull it off once more? Maybe. But then there is my haunted sense that they have said all they were ever meant to say as of two albums ago. My bet is that they are done. I just hope that they realize it before they get to where REM is today.

Thankfully, there is still a lot of good music out there, too much to pine away much for bands now way past their pull-date.

The Clash might be better appreciated in the sense that they aren't touring for retirement cash, thoguh Joe Strummer's untimely death is really very sad. There's nothing wrong with "The Search For More Money" tours; what else are these people to do with themselves?And they enjoy it.

At least there's some honesty to some bands, that it is about money. In the last Who documentary I saw,"Incredible Journey"(which is great), they only toured for the last 25 years because John Entwistle was a total spendthrift, on top of his other problems.I went to the 9/11 concert at MSG,and the Who simply stole the show. And they don't pretend their 22 like Mick Jagger does. It may only be a difference in style, but one is more honest and tolerable.

The Ramones had to have been the most screwed band in history-moron managers, Phil Spector holding them practically hostage, a lifelong feud between the singer and guitarist over a girl, just missed chances. Whent they wanted to capitalize on some belated and well-deserved recognition and release a punk cover album in the early 1990s, Guns and Roses bigfooted them and caused their label to drop it.Which was totally typical of their career. And when they finally start to get real appreciation, 2 of the guys die.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the Beatles after the break-up. What happened to Paul McCartney? How could someone who wrote such great songs eventually write "Say Say Say" and "Ebony and Ivory"?

And I suspect that I'm not the only crunchy con reader who thinks that John Lennon (after the Beatles) was incredibly overrated, and that "Imagine" is a wretched song.

On a more positive note, if Rod will allow me:

1) For U2 lovers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8SPeR60lRI

2) For Talking Heads lovers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQXsuAey-NE

3) For early Genesis lovers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdD6L4cKKU8

4) And why hasn't anyone mentioned Journey?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUc62lnhhPU

Thanks, astorian, for reminding me. I used to brag about how long REM and U2 did last. Its not that I am not still proud of their long runs or that I am not still happy with the music from before their decline. Its just that I have reached the point where I know that its over for REM and U2 may be done as well.

Both bands can be very proud of the caliber and length of their careers. They just need to hang it up now before their reputations are completely trashed.